


Tattlebones (or, Dead Men Might Actually Tell Tales When You Weren't Really Meaning For Them To)

by ineffablefool



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (nobody says Those Three Words to anyone else but they both know where they stand by the end), (not a main focus but he will always be lovely and round when i write him), Asexual Relationship, Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley thinks he's being clever and pranking Aziraphale, First Kiss, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, No Sex, No Smut, Other, Pining, Post-Canon, but the backfiring actually works out for him because this is a happy story, it backfires on him because he's Crowley, just Extremely Silly Fluff for 3k words, just some very light pining a mere fresh pine wreath as it were, lil bit of ableist language, this is the silly corner of the Soft Zone(TM), with an extremely sappy ending, with the tiniest bit of light angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 11:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20308921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffablefool/pseuds/ineffablefool
Summary: It was hilarious.  And Aziraphale was going to bloody hate it, which made it evenmorehilarious.Getting a reaction out of the angel was one of Crowley's favorite activities (never the one reaction he really wanted, of course, and after all these millennia he was almost used to that), and it was so easy to do that it wasn’t even a challenge.  In fact, when he saw the Halloween display in the corner shop window, the entire gag pretty much wrote itself.(Crowley picks up a tacky Halloween decoration, both to annoy Aziraphale with, and to try to deflect his own feelings through.  This is a very silly story which ends in smooching.)





	Tattlebones (or, Dead Men Might Actually Tell Tales When You Weren't Really Meaning For Them To)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very silly one (though also very soft and tender, because hello, have we met, my name is Jack and I am very soft and tender). (Also it is All Aboard The Asexual Fat Positivity Train over here, which, again, if we haven't met, my name is Jack and that's where I live. On the train. Er. This metaphor is kind of getting away from me.)
> 
> I was sitting in my cube at work, looking around for something to inspire a fic, when lo, mine eyes did fall upon the life-sized plastic skeleton which has been waving to everyone over the top of my cube wall since October 2017. And then my brain did a thing. And here we are. Crowley has picked up a tacky Halloween decoration to annoy Aziraphale with, and, spoiler alert, it will not actually end with Aziraphale being annoyed.
> 
> A bit of cursory Googling suggests that it's a lot less likely, in England, that one might pop into one's local Target or equivalent after about the third week of September, and go to the like eight aisles of Halloween stuff, and pick up a plastic skeleton to bring home (or to the office) with one as a new friend. But I had to write this once I got the idea, so I have taken A Liberty. 
> 
> [Real-life Lefty is poorly cosplaying as Crowley right now.](https://ineffablefool.tumblr.com/post/186983497419/do-you-ever-just-like-really-crack-yourself-up) His sunglasses have fallen off, though. I may need more electrical tape.
> 
> I'm writing for the TV characterization, but I've decided that my written Aziraphale's body is shaped like how Tumblr user speremint draws him (([1](https://speremint.tumblr.com/post/186342035100/i-did-this-instead-of-my-hw-ya-girl-is-gonna)) ([2 from her Reversed Omens AU](https://speremint.tumblr.com/post/186574829700/finally-finally-done-making-these-refs-my)) (dotstronaut also draws [a gorgeous Aziraphale here](https://dotstronaut.tumblr.com/post/186740069618/no-really-i-dont-think-you-all-understand-how) with a lovely round face)), because I much prefer to imagine that as I work. Please also imagine that as you read!

It was hilarious.

It was hilarious, and Aziraphale was going to bloody hate it, and that made it even _more_ hilarious.

Crowley had been feeling, for a while, as though he hadn’t been quite as... demonic. Well, not that he wanted to go back to the old grind, _exactly_, doing temptations and causing trouble just to please his old lot Downstairs. He hadn’t had a single bit of contact with them in over a month, not since he and Aziraphale had single-handedly done pretty much nothing toward saving the world; and that was more than fine by him.

Still. There was something in him that craved a spot of mischief, a smidge of chaos. Not enough to hurt anyone, of course. But annoying was good. Annoying was fun.

He was going to annoy the ever-loving _Heaven_ out of Aziraphale.

Getting a reaction out of the angel was one of his favorite activities (never the one reaction he really wanted, of course, and after all these millennia he was almost used to that), and it was so easy to do that it wasn’t even a challenge (with that one very minor exception). In fact, when he saw the Halloween display in the corner shop window, the entire gag pretty much wrote itself.

The next time he swung by Aziraphale’s, it was with a new friend in tow.

* * *

“What,” Aziraphale fixed him with a Look, “is _that_.”

“Oh, come on, Aziraphale! That any way to greet my good friend?” Grinning, Crowley flopped down onto the couch, propping up his instrument of discord beside him. “Lefty, meet Aziraphale. Aziraphale, Lefty.”

Aziraphale looked faintly ill.

“Lefty doesn’t talk much, but he’s a _great_ listener, angel.”

“...I’ll get the wine.”

“Three glasses, mind!”

Crowley grinned even harder. Best twenty pounds he’d ever spent, not that he had to care about spending, really. One of his pairs of sunglasses and a spare jacket sacrificed to the cause, and bam, there was Lefty: a life-sized, stiffly-posed plastic skeleton, sitting neat as you please on the couch beside him, and every bit as cool and fashionable as Crowley himself.

Granted, he’d had to convince the sunglasses that they weren’t really beholden to gravity anymore, since Lefty didn’t have ears. But he’d had worse battles of will with his gardenias.

Aziraphale, of course, came back with only two glasses, setting one very firmly down on the table in front of Crowley and sitting in his chair with the other.

Crowley miracled one up for Lefty and filled it.

“Crowley.”

“What? You don’t want to be inhospitable, do you?”

Aziraphale narrowed his beautiful blue eyes, and Crowley tipped Lefty’s glass to him in a jaunty little toast before downing it.

* * *

A couple of hours later, having paced himself fairly well on both his and Lefty’s wine, Crowley was pleasantly hazy but not full-out drunk. Aziraphale, for his part, looked a bit as though he _wished_ he was drunk. One hand tapping the stem of his wineglass, the other resting atop the delightful mound of his belly. Rude of him to not bring enough for the whole class.

“But my point,” Crowley announced.

“Ah, so you have one, then?”

“Rude again, angel,” Crowley said, only realizing that he was getting mixed up with the kind of thoughts best not spoken aloud when Aziraphale mouthed _again?_ in confusion. “My point! Is Lefty. He’s had enough. Prolly — probbul — he should get some sleep.”

Aziraphale’s expression softened. “I don’t think he’s the one who needs sleep, dear fellow.”

“Nah, he’s a lightweight. Why d’you think I’ve been havin’ his drinks all night?”

Crowley blinked, and Aziraphale was no longer in the chair. Instead, the angel stood over him, one arm clutching a mess of pillows and blankets to his chest. The other hand was on Crowley’s shoulder.

Huh. Maybe he was a little drunk after all.

Not too drunk to savor the warm weight of that hand, though.

“You idiot,” Aziraphale said kindly. “Let me throw that horrid thing away, and then you can lie down.”

Crowley gave Lefty an awkward hug. “Not horrid. ‘S m’pal. He needs a place to sleep too.”

“Crowley...” Aziraphale sighed. “Fine. I’ll put it in my chair if you promise to _lie down_.”

“Not it! Him!” But he dropped his arms again, only giving minimal instructions as Aziraphale picked the thing up and sat it more or less upright in the chair.

“Ought to send it to the bottom of the Thames,” Aziraphale muttered; but Crowley knew it was an empty threat. That was Aziraphale’s “you’re an idiot but I love you” voice, and if the kind of love Aziraphale had for him was that of a long friendship... well. It wasn’t anything new, was it.

Crowley keeled over onto the couch, face nestled against a pillow still warm from the angel’s having held it. He mumbled sleepily as Aziraphale spread a couple of mismatched tartan blankets over him.

His wine-soaked brain wanted to say “I love you, angel,” but it came out more like “mrfk”.

He might have felt a hand stroke his hair.

“Good night, Crowley.”

* * *

He woke once, in the dim light of early morning. Out in the main shop he could just hear Aziraphale’s quiet footsteps moving between shelves. Reorganizing again, probably. Any excuse to dote over his precious books.

Lefty still sat in Aziraphale’s chair, grinning his plastic grin. Crowley considered him for a moment. “Bloody poor substitute for him, you are,” he informed him. “Lousy conversationalist. Can’t hold your liquor.”

His voice was only a sleepy mutter, but he still hesitated before speaking the rest aloud. “And not nearly soft enough. Don’t want to hold _you_ at all.”

Lefty had nothing to say to that, but he listened without judgment, at least.

Crowley rolled over and went back to sleep.

* * *

When the sun was properly up, Crowley headed out to the shop floor to find Aziraphale. The angel had opened for the day, apparently, because there were actually customers; one had managed to get past the couple of displays of books Aziraphale was actually _willing_ to part with, and had moved into distinctly forbidden territory.

Aziraphale fluttered around the woman like a distressed pigeon. Crowley allowed himself to smile fondly for exactly two seconds before coming to the rescue.

“Heyyy,” he said, slinking up next to the woman, leaning in to see what book she was so impertinently trying to exchange legal tender for. “Oh. Mm, a classic. One of Le Fanu’s best, really. Have you read him?”

He leaned just a little on the wiles, and was rewarded with a faint blush on the woman’s cheeks. “Oh, no, actually. I’m just looking for, you know, something new.”

Crowley rolled his neck bonelessly to look around the dusty shop. “Well, _you’ve_ come to the wrong place, haven’t you?” Flirtatious, offering her the chance to laugh along. She did so. Good. Aziraphale’s first edition was all but saved. The angel apparently realized it, too, because he looked less nervous now, although his brow was still furrowed.

“Thing is,” Crowley went on, gently pulling the book from unresisting hands. “I’d actually recommend getting started with a different one of his. If you don’t mind...?”

“Of course,” she responded. Crowley had the wiles turned off by now, but she still gave him an appreciative look, down and then up again. He returned her quick grin with a bit more disgruntled tooth than he’d intended. Whole lot of good it did him, some random human looking at him all heart-eyes. Only one being in the universe he wanted that from, and...

...and Aziraphale’s book still wasn’t quite saved, so. Crowley steered the woman over to one of the publicly-accessible displays.

“Let’s see, it should be... yeah, here it is.” He pulled a volume from the shelf, handing it to her with a little flourish. “Try this one. If you like it, you’ll _love_ the rest of his work.”

“You’re very... helpful,” the woman said. “Do you work here, ah...?”

“Nope. Just a frequent patron.”

He waved gallantly toward the register, waited just long enough to be sure she was walking over to it, then slipped away before she could try to get his name again. Or worse, his number.

The novel he’d palmed off on her was the worst this guy had ever written, so at least she wouldn’t be back. And a careful patrol of the floor didn’t reveal anyone else threatening the books. Job well done, then.

When he went looking for Aziraphale this time, the angel was reshelving. Up on tiptoes to reach a level above his head, shop jacket swinging backwards for a moment as his round body leaned into the stretch.

“Hah!” he said, with obvious relish, as the book finally slotted into place. He dropped back down, and Crowley found himself able to move again.

“Step stools exist, angel.”

Aziraphale cut Crowley one of those sideways glances that always made him feel a little funny in the knees. “Yes, well.” He busied himself with another book. “Thank you, I suppose. For putting your demonic wiles to good use.”

“Feel like that’s an oxymoron.” Crowley leaned against the edge of the shelf, watching over his sunglasses for just a second before popping them back up. “Had breakfast yet?”

That got him another look from Aziraphale, but not a funny-knees one. “Breakfast? Well, no, I haven’t, but... I don’t know, it isn’t as though we usually...”

Not as though they usually had breakfast together on mornings Crowley slept over on the couch, no. The done thing was for him to let himself out and drive back to his flat with barely a few words to the angel. And then nothing until their next get-together.

“Sure, yeah.” Crowley straightened up and wandered toward the door. “See you tomorrow, then?”

There was a smile in Aziraphale’s voice when he answered. “Oh, yes. Eight o’clock!” Then — “Oh, and Crowley, _do_ take your —”

Crowley let the door shut behind him. Lefty, now back on the couch, would get to hang around, anyway. 

* * *

After dinner the next night, they wound up in the back room, of course. Lefty was exactly where Crowley had stuck him, propped up against the end of the couch, one plastic arm draped over the back.

“Ugh, that _awful_ thing,” Aziraphale clucked as he got the wine. “You _must_ take it with you when you leave this time, or I won’t be responsible for what happens to it.”

Crowley shoved the skeleton over, then flopped down next to it and eased an arm around its shoulders. “Oi! Still no need to be rude to my friend here!”

“I _know_ you’re only doing this to irritate me.” The tone was right, prickly as all get-out, but Aziraphale wasn’t quite turned away when he said it. And Crowley caught, just for a half-second, the little smile that flitted across the angel’s lips.

Which plainly meant he needed to distract himself with more mischief, so he didn’t think too much about how much he wanted to introduce those lips to his own. So! Distraction. _Deflection_. Give himself something to do with all these terribly undemonic emotions that insisted on oozing up all over the place. That was the problem with repression; after six thousand years, the feelings really started to grow teeth. (Did oozes have teeth? Crowley couldn’t remember. He’d taken credit for the more occult bits of Dungeons & Dragons, obviously, back during that whole devil-worshipping panic in the 1980s. But it’d been decades since he’d actually played.)

Crowley shared a friendly grin with Lefty, still dolled up in his own spare sunglasses and jacket. He could give the fellow something else of his, sure? Sure.

“‘S not like that at all,” he said, responding to Aziraphale’s last comment. He accepted a wineglass from the angel, then watched him settle his gorgeous bulk into the chair across the way. “Lefty’s actually quite fond of you. Told me so himself.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow above his own glass. “Did he now.”

“Oh, yeah. Why else d’you think he wanted to stay over yesterday?” Then, without waiting for a response: “Because he couldn’t stand to be away from you, angel! Really, he’s just _obvious_ about it.”

“I see.”

There was a strange little wobble to the words, and Crowley looked up sharply behind his glasses, but didn’t see anything wrong. Just Aziraphale, sitting primly in his chair, so brilliant and round and adorable that Crowley had to assign all his feelings to a bloody toy skeleton to keep from _really_ messing everything up. “Aziraphale, I love you and I want to squeeze you and kiss you until we can’t either of us remember our own names,” really, _that’s_ what he wanted to say? The angel would _laugh_ at him. And then shout at him and throw him out and never speak to him again.

But Lefty was just a lump of articulated plastic. Aziraphale could put his foot down, _actually_ insist that Crowley get rid of the thing, and Crowley would, yep, absolutely. Look, it’s gone now, angel. It’s gone and all the stuff you’re angry about is gone with it. So now we can keep being friends, right?

He turned Lefty’s head so it was looking at Aziraphale and removed the borrowed sunglasses. “See, right there in those, uh, big black eye sockets. True love right there, that is, even if he tries to hide it.” He scratched his head. “Though I suppose eye sockets aren’t all that expressive. But there’s real feeling there. Very, uh... very _sincere devotion_. Yes, he's a deep one, our Lefty.”

Crowley looked over at Aziraphale to gauge his reaction. Ideally, he’d be somewhere in the vicinity of “annoyed”, but still enough in the neighborhood of “indulgent” that Crowley could keep on just a little bit more. Whatever he put in Lefty’s mouth would stop bothering him, a little, for a while. Maybe.

The angel didn’t look annoyed, though. He actually looked mildly shocked. Really? A sub-vaudeville act with a tacky Halloween decoration was enough for that?

Aziraphale set his wineglass down, then folded his hands across his belly. Which was unfair, because now Crowley was preoccupied with envying those hands, and wasn’t entirely thinking when he heard the angel’s next question:

“And what does... Lefty see in me, then?”

“Wellll,” Crowley said to the ceiling. “He thinks you’re brilliant, obviously. Clever and just really good with words — ‘member I said he was a great listener? It’s easy when there’s someone clever to listen _to_. And he likes that you’re so bloody _kind_ for some reason, can’t imagine why, although don’t think he hasn’t noticed you’re a right bastard when you want to be, and he loves it. And of _course_ he thinks you’re bloody _hot_, angel. Pretty sure he’d shank a man for the chance to get his arms around... y...”

He finally glanced over again, and the rest of the sentence slithered into nothing. Aziraphale still didn’t look annoyed. He didn’t look mildly shocked anymore, either.

Aziraphale’s eyes were very, very bright. He had one hand over his mouth, as if to cover a smile, but if that was his intention then it was a miserable failure, really, because his entire face was lit up. Couldn’t miss that smile from the moon.

Crowley mumbled a few more syllables.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, in a voice almost as bright as his eyes. “My goodness. I really had... no idea that your _friend_ there felt such things for me.”

“Nnh?”

“In fact, there really is no need for such... drastic measures... if he would wish to, er...”

Crowley swallowed. “Get his arms around you, and. And probably kiss you till he forgets his own name?”

“Oh yes. Very much that.”

Aziraphale stood, his hands behind himself. He rocked thoughtfully on his heels, smile turning just a little bit wicked. “I suppose I should just walk over to him, then, and give him the opportunity to —”

Crowley grabbed the bloody stupid toy skeleton with both hands and chucked it over the back of the couch. Didn’t even react to the plastic clatter. “Screw that guy, he’s a git anyway.” His chest sucked in a breath on its own. “If I forget my name you can just give me a new one.”

Aziraphale crossed the distance to the couch, and sat down in the newly-vacated spot there, and Crowley pulled every bit of round beautiful angel into his arms.

“I think ‘beloved’ will do quite nicely,” Aziraphale said.

“Gngh,” Crowley replied.

Then Aziraphale kissed him, and neither of them said anything more at all.

* * *

A week later, the woman he’d saved Aziraphale’s Le Fanu from came back.

Crowley could’ve kicked himself. “A frequent patron”, he’d called himself, and yes, okay, granted, he was usually at the shop at least one day in three (had actually been there quite a bit more over the last week, as a matter of fact), but that didn’t mean she had to _stalk_ him.

And she was definitely not back for another book. Not when the first thing she did on walking in through the door was to glance around, spot Crowley lurking by Aziraphale while the angel fussed with inventory, and stroll right over to him with a sly little smile. Dressed up a whole lot more than she’d been the last time, too. _Definitely_ not here for a book.

“Hi,” she said. “I was sort of hoping to run into you again.”

“Were you.” Crowley crossed his arms and leaned against the shelf.

She gave her name, and Crowley promptly forgot it. “I was wondering if you’d like to go for coffee, ah...?”

“Crowley?”

He turned back. “Yes, angel?”

Aziraphale held a book out to him. “Would you? See, up there, second from the left...”

Crowley saw, yep. The book went on a shelf just a bit above where Aziraphale could reach comfortably. Three extra inches of height, and some longer arms, would make it an easy job.

“‘F course. Here.”

As soon as the book was sorted, he put those long arms of his exactly where they belonged: all the way around the glorious soft expanse of Aziraphale’s waist, bringing his angel close enough to lay a kiss right on the very roundest part of his cheek.

“Oh!” Aziraphale’s eyes sparkled, and he shifted delightfully against Crowley to peer around one black-clad shoulder. “Young lady, I’m afraid the shop is now closed.”

When he didn’t immediately hear the woman’s receding footfalls, Crowley turned his head just enough to fix her with a glare. “_Sod off_,” he added helpfully.

The front door slammed shut behind her, miraculously becoming locked even before the windows were done rattling. Lefty, now in a place of honor by the register as a reward for his excellent wingmanship (at least until Halloween was over), fell over for about the third time that morning.

Crowley would care about that later. At this exact moment, though, there was still another cheek to get his lips on. And after that there was the angel’s forehead, and the tip of his nose. Maybe even the corner of his mouth, right there where it would dimple, just a bit. All leading up to what Crowley had discovered was his absolute favorite spot to kiss Aziraphale — just under the jaw, the sweet swell of his double chin — because it turned out that Aziraphale was _ticklish_ there and the touch made him _giggle_ and Crowley was intent on taking advantage of this wonderful new knowledge as often as he possibly could.

In a wholly _demonic_ way, obviously. Spreading chaos and all that. Reducing an angel, an actual member of the Divine Host, to blushing giggles, on (by now) _multiple_ occasions? Obvious demon stuff. Mischievous. Probably annoying the Heaven out of someone, somewhere. Perfectly appropriate behavior for an occult entity like himself.

And if he also just happened to live for getting that particular reaction out of his adorable bastard of an angel, so what? Nobody needed to know that except for the angel and him.

**Author's Note:**

> (For the record, the author mentioned here is [Sheridan Le Fanu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheridan_Le_Fanu). I literally just went Wikipedia-ing until I found a 19th century European author who had written enough novels that I could reasonably assume there'd be a good spread between the best and worst ones. I dig horror, and this guy apparently wrote a lot of it, so that's a fun bonus for me!)
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you were thinking of leaving a comment, please know that I treasure every single one, whether it's a single emoticon, a copy-pasted line, a keysmash, an entire novel of feelings, or whatever. I've literally cried a few times reading some of the lovely things people have said in comments, and they really are fuel for my soft little heart -- but never, ever required, so please don't feel pressured.
> 
> If you want to say hi on Tumblr, I'm [ineffablefool](https://ineffablefool.tumblr.com) there, too, and I would love to talk to you there. It's mostly just reblogs of Good Omens things that I want to keep around (with novels in the tags, usually), but there's [original GO-related content](https://ineffablefool.tumblr.com/tagged/ineffablefool-original-post) here and there (some of which is about WIPs!).
> 
> I would never actively request art from anyone I wasn't paying, but if you, the human reading this, were to decide it was worth your time to create fanart based on any of my stories, I would be incredibly honored ([and would love to enshrine it forever on my Tumblr](https://ineffablefool.tumblr.com/tagged/ineffablefool-gets-fanart-from-lovely-people))! I have only one requirement: please don't draw Aziraphale any thinner than the size I headcanon (I need both my soft cuddly daydreams, and my positive fat representation). Here are some examples of what that sort of minimum body size/shape might look like: ([speremint 1](https://speremint.tumblr.com/post/186342035100/i-did-this-instead-of-my-hw-ya-girl-is-gonna)) ([speremint 2 from her Reversed Omens AU](https://speremint.tumblr.com/post/186574829700/finally-finally-done-making-these-refs-my)) ([dotstronaut](https://dotstronaut.tumblr.com/post/186740069618/no-really-i-dont-think-you-all-understand-how)) Otherwise, the characters can look however you like!
> 
> I hope you're having a fantastic day.


End file.
